Carlton Football Club
The Carlton Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is a professional Australian rules football club based at Princes Park in Carlton North, an inner suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. The club competes in the Australian Football League, the sport's premier competition.
Founded in the 1860s, the club began playing out of parklands historically part of Carlton not far from its current base. It quickly became one of the major football clubs in the city. It was a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association, winning the inaugural premiership in 1877. In 1896, Carlton joined the breakaway Victorian Football League, and alongside rivals, and is regarded as one of the league's historical "Big Four" clubs, with 16 VFL/AFL premierships. The club's AFL Women's team has competed since the league's inaugural 2017 AFLW season.
It currently plays its home matches at Docklands Stadium and the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Princes Park is its traditional home ground of the club and is home to its women's team. Carlton also has reserves sides in the Victorian Football League and VFL Women's.
Club history
Early history
During a meeting on 17 May 1865 at the University Hotel in Grattan Street Carlton the Carlton Football Club nominated secretary Ben James and president James Linacre respectively. The club formally adopted the Melbourne Football Club rules. This is the earliest record of incorporation however the club believes it was formed earlier based on numerous indirect accounts and officially celebrates anniversaries based on a foundation date of 1864. It also continues to investigate evidence of an earlier foundation, including the proposed formation of a Carlton Football Club on 21 May 1861 connected to a Carlton Cricket Club.The earliest records of the club playing were from 1865 out of Princes Park in Carlton.
In the early days, Carlton became particularly strong competitively and grew a large supporter base. It became a fierce rival to the Melbourne Football Club in early competitions, including the South Yarra Challenge Cup, and the club is recognised as senior Victorian premiers in 1871, 1873, 1874 and 1875.
Victorian Football Association and Victorian Football League
In 1877, Carlton was one of the foundation clubs of the Victorian Football Association, and was a comfortable winner of the premiership in the competition's inaugural season.Carlton was one of the first clubs to have a player worthy of the superstar tag: champion player George Coulthard, who played for Carlton between 1876 and 1882, and was noted by The Australasian as 'The grandest player of the day'. He died of tuberculosis in 1883, aged 27.
The club won one more VFA premiership, in 1887, but after that, particularly during the 1890s, the club went from one of the strongest clubs in the Association to one of the weaker, both on-field and off-field. In spite of this, the club was invited to join the breakaway Victorian Football League competition in 1897. The club continued to struggle in early seasons of the new competition, and finished seventh out of eight teams in each of its first five seasons.
Jack Worrall to World War I
Carlton's fortunes improved significantly in 1902. The Board elected the highly respected former Fitzroy footballer and Australian test cricketer Jack Worrall, then the secretary of the Carlton Cricket Club, to the same position at the football club. As secretary, Worrall slowly took over the managing of the players, in what is now recognised as the first official coaching role in the VFL. Under Worrall's guidance in the latter part of the 1902 season, Carlton's on-field performances improved, and in 1903 he led Carlton to the finals for the first time.Carlton built a strong reputation and financial position, and was able to convince many great players to shift to the club from other clubs, or even out of retirement. Worrall led the club to its first three VFL premierships, won consecutively, in 1906, 1907 and 1908. Carlton became the first club in the VFL to win three premierships in a row, and its win–loss record of 19–1 in the 1908 season was a record which stood for more than ninety years.
Following these premierships, Carlton went through a tumultuous period off-field. Some players had become frustrated by low payments and hard training standards, and responded by refusing to train or even play matches. The club removed Worrall from the coaching role, and after significant changes at board level after the 1909 season, Worrall left the club altogether. Many players who had supported Worrall left the club at the end of the season. Then, in 1910, several players were suspected of having taken bribes to fix matches, with two players both found guilty and suspended for 99 matches. Despite this backdrop, Carlton continued its strong on-field form, reaching the 1909 and 1910 Grand Finals, but losing both.
Carlton fell out of the finals in 1913, but returned in 1914 under coach Norm Clark, and with many inexperienced players, to win back-to-back premierships in 1914 and 1915 VFL seasons. Most football around the country was suspended during the height of World War I, but Carlton continued to compete in a VFL which featured, at its fewest, only four clubs. Altogether, between Jack Worrall's first Grand Final in 1904 and the peak of World War I in 1916, Carlton won five premierships and contested nine Grand Finals for one of the most successful times in the club's history. The only success which eluded the club was the Championship of Australia; Carlton contested the championship three times, with its South Australian opponents victorious on all three occasions.
Between the wars
Through the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, Carlton maintained a strong on-field presence. The club was a frequent finalist, contesting fourteen finals series between the wars. However, premiership success did not follow, and the club contested only three Grand Finals for just one premiership during this period, and endured the second longest premiership drought in the club's history. The drought was broken with the club's sixth VFL premiership in 1938, when former Subiaco and South Melbourne champion Brighton Diggins was recruited by the club to serve as captain-coach.On-field, Carlton's inter-war period was highlighted by two of its greatest goalkickers: in the 1920s, Horrie Clover, and in the 1930s, Harry "Soapy" Vallence, both of which were Carlton career records at the time.
1941–64
The VFL continued to operate through World War II. With the retirement of Diggins, Carlton secured the services of former coach Percy Bentley, who coached the club for fifteen seasons. Carlton continued to finish in or near the finals without premiership success through the war, before winning the premiership in 1945, one month after peace. In a remarkable season, Carlton languished with a record of 3–6 after nine weeks, but won ten of the remaining eleven home-and-away matches to finish fourth; Carlton then comfortably beat in the first semi-final, overcame a 28-point deficit in the final quarter to beat Collingwood in the preliminary final, then beat South Melbourne in the notoriously brutal and violent Bloodbath Grand Final.Carlton contested two more Grand Finals in the 1940s, both against, winning the 1947 Grand Final by a single point, and being comfortably beaten in 1949. Thereafter followed what was then Carlton's weakest on-field period since Worrall's appointment in 1902, with the club reaching the finals only four times between 1950 and 1964. Finishing tenth out of twelve and winning only five matches, 1964 was Carlton's worst VFL season to that point in its history.
Ron Barassi to 1973
A change of president at the end of 1964 heralded the most successful period in the Carlton Football Club's history. Between 1967 and 1988, Carlton missed the finals only three times, contested ten Grand Finals, and won seven premierships.The period of success began when George Harris replaced Lew Holmes as president of the club, after the 1964 season. Harris then signed legend Ron Barassi serve as coach from 1965. Barassi was a six-time premiership player and two-time premiership captain at Melbourne during its most successful era, and at the age of 28 was still one of the biggest names in the game. His shift to Carlton remains one of the biggest player transfers in the game's history. Also contributing to Carlton's success was the strength of the Bendigo Football League, to which Carlton gained recruitment access through the VFL's country zoning arrangements.
Under Barassi, Carlton reached three consecutive Grand Finals between 1968 and 1970, resulting in two premierships: 1968 against Essendon and 1970 against traditional rivals Collingwood. The 1970 Grand Final remains one of the most famous matches in football history. Played in front of an enduring record crowd of 121,696, Collingwood dominated early to lead by 44 points at half time, but Carlton kicked seven goals in fifteen minutes after half time to narrow the margin to only three points; after a close final quarter, Carlton won its tenth VFL premiership with a ten-point victory. Carlton won its first and second Championship of Australia titles in 1968 and 1970, beating the SANFL's Sturt Football Club in both seasons.
Carlton missed the finals in 1971, and Barassi left the club at the end of the season, but Carlton returned to prominence the following year, and contested back-to-back Grand Finals. Both matches were against, with Carlton recording a high-scoring victory in 1972, and losing a rough, physical encounter in 1973.
Of the legendary players from the Barassi era, none was more important than John Nicholls, who captained all three premierships and took over as captain-coach upon Barassi's departure. Nicholls, a ruckman and forward, had played at Carlton since 1957, and he and Graham Farmer are regarded as the greatest ruckmen in the league's history. Midfielders Sergio Silvagni and Adrian Gallagher, half-forward Robert Walls, and ruckman Percy Jones were also prominent throughout the Barassi era, and in 1970, Alex Jesaulenko became the first Carlton forward to kick 100 goals in a season.